All nymphs
Roman · Singing nymph
Canens
Canens is the singing nymph of Latium whose grief for Picus ends with her fading beside the Tiber.
Story shape
When only the song remains
In Ovid, Canens is Janus' daughter and Picus' wife. Circe transforms Picus into a woodpecker after he rejects her. Canens searches for six days and nights, then wastes away in grief beside the river.
Her ending leaves absence in place of a transformed tree or spring. The remembered singer gives the landscape its sorrow.
Ancient accounts
Tradition boundary
Roman nymphs often gather around springs, groves, prophecy, healing, and the political imagination of early Rome.